A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE B CRIME WRITING UNSEEN EXTRACT Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract?
Received A* 24/25 marks
Unseen Extract – ‘Confessions of A Murder
Suspectʼ By James Patterson (chapter 1)
Unseen Extract – ‘Confessions of A Murder Suspectʼ By James Patterson (chapter 1)
Idea of secrets.
Police and the setting being hardboiled.
The narrative shifting time.
The descriptions of the bodies being taken out.
The extract presents the beginning chapter of a novel reflecting the earlier crime which has
occurred, a double homicide where the suspect appears to be the focalising homodiegetic
narrator whoʼs perspective we are indulging in. The crime elements of secrecy, the police,
murder, and death are all explored. In this essay I will therefore discuss the significance of this
extract in relation to the genre of crime writing as a whole.
As the extract begins the idea of secrets is immediately introduced with the narrators line; “I
have some really bad secrets to share with. Someone, and it might as well be you-“. The
diary/journal entry in which the narrative is presented acts as a dramatic device linking to early
Gothic novels such as Dracula and Frankenstein where parts of the novel are told in letters to
add drama and tension. Through the extract quickly establishes anticipation in the reader,
setting up numerous questions in the writing which the reader hopes to get an answer to, but
delaying the answer so pressure builds. This is heightened through the extracts shift from
present to past tense creating a blurry narrative structure with flashforwards and backs as a
form of prolepsis. The unclear and fractured timeline depicting the crime reflects the narrators
own struggles recounting it suggesting that this was a deeply emotional time, or more sinisterly
one which they cannot tell truthfully emphasised by this reference to “secrets”. The binaries of
“here goes nothing” contrasted immediately with “everything” suggests that the depth and
thickness of the story is something the reader has only been granted the surface level of. There
is more to come and through this the extract is significant in building this tension.
With the narrators brother calling out the declarative; “My parents were vile, but they didnʼt
deserve to be taken out with the trash!” the vivid imagery of the “slick black body bags” with
the adjective “slick” alluding to blood reflects the grotesque nature of the crime. It introduces
the idea and image into the reader of the dead bodies being removed adding an existentialist
tone to the extract also. Are not all bodies simply trash when they are not longer alive?
Following this description of the bodies being taken out the immediate further flashback into
the time before the discovery of the bodies the reader is left to reflect on the disturbing nature
in which beings who were once alive are simply packaged away.
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